Byzantine granary found in ancient city of Amorium in central Turkey

Mavi Boncuk |

A granary containing 11 pithoi[1], which are large storage containers, filled with wheat and dating back to the ninth-century Byzantine period, was found during excavations in the ancient city of Amorium in the Emirdağ district of the central province of Afyonkarahisar.

Amorium is located in the Hisar village where traces of seven civilizations have been found including Hittite, Phrygian, Greek, Roman, Byzantine, Seljuk and Ottoman. The discoveries were found during excavations carried out by British scientist Martin Harrison and British researcher Chris Lightfoot.

Some important findings have been uncovered during digs in the ancient city, which were resumed under the leadership of professor Zeliha Gökalp Demirel with the cooperation of the Ministry of Culture and Tourism and Anadolu University (AU) in 2013.

A big church, a basilica, a Byzantine bath, grape-grinding pools, Seljuk and Ottoman coins and a ceramic kiln were found during excavations of the Amorium mound, which consists of an upper city and a lower city. 


Küp: jar [2] fromPE kūp كوپ sarnıç, toprağa gömülen su veya şarap küpü Aramaic gūbbā גובא a.a. Akkadian gubbu

i. (Eski Türkçe’den beri kullanılır)
1. İçine su, yağ, pekmez gibi sıvılar ve buğday, un vb. erzak konan, karnı geniş, dibi dar toprak kap: Avlunun malta taşlarını yıkarken, merdivenleri ovarken, iyi su küpünü şartlarken de bir şeyler okuyor gāliba (Yusuf Z. Ortaç). Küp orada, maşrapa orada (Mustafa N. Sepetçioğlu).
2. (İsim tamlamasının ikinci öğesi olarak) Bir şeyin bir kimsede çok miktarda bulunduğunu anlatır: “Akıl küpü.” “Sinir küpü.” “Fesat küpü.” “Sır küpü.” Dedikodu küpüne her elini daldırışında renk renk, çeşit çeşit haberler çıkarır (Sâmiha Ayverdi). 
3. Ayın (ﻉ) ve hâ (ﺡ) gibi Arap harflerinin küpe benzeyen yuvarlak kısmı.
4. mîmar. Minâre ve kubbe alemlerinin en alt bölümündeki küpe benzer toparlak kısım.

Küp gibi:
1. Kısa boylu ve çok şişman, fıçı gibi.
2. Çok sarhoş. Küp kapağı hotoz: Sünnet çocuğu takkesine benzeyen bir hotoz çeşidi. Küplere binmek: Çok kızmak, aşırı derecede öfkelenmek: Hâkan işi anlayınca küplere bindi (Ziyâ Gökalp). Sen elin karısında nâmus ara / Kendinde arandı mı küplere bin (Orhan V. Kanık). Bunu gören kadın büsbütün küplere bindi (Burhan Felek). Küpün arkası gurbet: Görüşmedikten sonra en yakın mesâfe bile insana gurbet gibi gelir. 

Küpünü doldurmak: Eline geçen fırsatları değerlendirip çok para biriktirmek.

[1] Pithos (/ˈpɪθɒs/, Greek: πίθος, plural: pithoi πίθοι) is the Greek name of a large storage container. The term in English is applied to such containers used among the civilizations that bordered the Mediterranean Sea in the Neolithic, the Bronze Age and the succeeding Iron Age. Pithoi were used for bulk storage, primarily for fluids and grains; they were comparable to the drums, barrels and casks of recent times. The name was different in other languages; for instance, the Hittites used harsi- .

Pithoi were manufactured and exported or imported over the entire Mediterranean. They were used most heavily in the Bronze Age palace economy for storing or shipping wine, olive oil, or various types of vegetable products for distribution to the populace served by the palace administration. Consequently, they became known to the modern public as pithoi when western classical archaeologists adopted the term to mean the jars uncovered by excavation of Minoan palaces on Crete and Mycenaean ones on mainland Greece.

The term has now been adopted into the English language as a general word for a storage jar from any culture.

[2] jar (n.) "simple earthen or glass cylindrical vessel," early 15c., possibly from rare Old French jarre "liquid measure smaller than a barrel," or more likely from Medieval Latin jarra (13c.) or Spanish or Catalan jarra (13c.), all ultimately from Arabic jarrah "earthen water vessel, ewer" (whence also Provençal jarra, Italian giarra), a general word in the 13c. Mediterranean sea-trade, which is from Persian jarrah "a jar, earthen water-vessel." Originally in English a large container used for importing olive oil.

In Britain in the 15th to 17th centuries, oil-lamps were overall not often used, because the oil was too expensive. Usage increased in the 17th century despite the expense. Olive oil was the most-often-used type of oil in the oil-lamps until the 18th century. The indications are good that no country or region exported more oil to Britain than southern Spain did in the 15th-17th centuries, with southern Italy coming second. ["English Words of Arabic Ancestry"]